The would-be far-rightwing dictator of a democratic country didn’t trust the police.
When he led a local coup aimed at ultimately establishing his national dictatorship, a contingent of local cops stopped him.
So, as he rose to power, he created a private army of thugs to protect himself and beat up and terrorize all who stood in the way of his rise to absolute authoritarianism.
No sooner did he become dictator in 1933 than he took over the country’s police forces and created a state-sponsored paramilitary organization, including secret police, which stepped up the terror against his opponents and oversaw an ever-broadening network of “detention centers” to hold those he despised, notably an ethnic minority he called “subhuman” and “vermin.”
Is it way over-the-top to liken Adolf Hitler’s SA — popularly known as “Brownshirts” — to the white nationalist militia organizations that dote on Donald Trump? How about comparing the SS and Gestapo to ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]?
Hitler infamously summed up his Nazi rule as Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer, which means “One People (excluding Jews and others deemed inferior), One Government, One Leader.”
In a recent New York Times column, Thomas B. Edsall quoted Eric Levitz who wrote in Vox, “Three days after Renee Good’s killing, Trump’s Department of Labor tweeted, ‘One Homeland. One People. One Heritage. Remember who you are, American.’”
Wrote Robert C. Koehler in Common Dreams: “Unsurprisingly, a lot of people see a parallel with Hitler and the Nazi era. They call ICE Trump’s Gestapo.”
Even so, he proposed that arguing over whether the president “is ‘being Hitler,’ is beside the point. He’s feeding not just hatred to his supporters — contempt for the radical left — but he’s also feeding them a chance for actual victory over the left: the chance to create the world they want.”
According to Koehler, “Trump is at war with half — maybe two-thirds — of the country. He’s invading the cities — including Minneapolis, where Renee Good lived — that voted against him, that dared to declare themselves sanctuary cities. Where is this all going?”
The author conceded, “Of course, there’s plenty of disagreement and criticism about this. Come on, this ain’t the Third Reich! And I agree, to an extent. I see little value in comparing Trump to Hitler simply to intensify the insult you’re throwing back at him. But in a larger sense, God help us! What is going on here?”
Koehler senses that the president aims to undo “any semblance of democracy. Trump is seizing hold of the hatred and political rancor that exists in this country and is attempting to use it to his advantage. He’s feeding it to his supporters, empowering them with it. He has no interest whatsoever in uniting the country, finding common ground between sides, or embracing complex values as he governs. He just wants to eliminate the bad guys, the anti-Trumpers. All of us have a dark side, and Trump has been successfully summoning the darkness of his supporters. Go get ‘em, boys! And wear your masks!”
Koehler concluded by posing the question that’s setting off alarm bells across the broad spectrum of MAGA opposition: “How do we push back against this? How do we stop it before it gets politically entrenched and starts pulling in the American center? I can’t think of a harder question to answer.”
I put Koehler’s hard question to retired Murray State University historian Kenneth Wolf, whose specialty is German history. He agreed that Trump and his movement are an existential threat to American democracy. But he believes anti-MAGA Americans are better equipped to thwart Trump than anti-Nazi Germans were to rid themselves of Hitler. “We have the tools they lacked in the 1930s,” he said.
In 1933, the U.S. was a well-established representative democracy, albeit far from perfect. Segregation and race discrimination were the law in the old Confederacy and in border states like Kentucky. Minorities and women wouldn’t begin to achieve equality before the law for another three decades.
Germans, on the other hand, had never experienced genuine democratic self-government until 1919 when the Weimar Republic was officially created to succeed the deposed exile Kaiser Wilhelm II, who had led Germany to defeat in World War I.
The Weimar Republic never enjoyed universal popularity. The German far right, including Hitler and the Nazis, despised parliamentary democracy. The communist left wanted “bourgeoise democracy” replaced with a Soviet-style government.
Center-left, and to some extent center-right, parties, desperately tried to save the republic, which was ultimately doomed by the worldwide depression. Hitler falsely blamed Germany’s economic straits on Jews and leftists. (He also propagated the “stabbed in the back” lie that during the war Jews and leftists conspired at home to defeat Germany.)
Wolf also said that while millions of Americans are taking to the streets to protest Trump and his authoritarian policies, there were no mass demonstrations against Hitler after he took power.
“We have a tradition of standing up to government which the Germans lacked in the 30s,” Wolf said, adding that today “We also have technology to reach people the Germans didn’t have.”
Wolf, a member of the Calloway County Democratic Executive Committee, proposed five ways Trump might be stopped, starting with continuing grassroots protests and rallies. Last July, he was a featured speaker at a “Families First” rally in Paducah, sponsored by Four Rivers Indivisible, a local branch of the national Indivisible group.
He said Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, both Democrats, “are right in saying ‘don’t take the bait’ and attack ICE physically, but instead assemble peacefully in large numbers and everywhere.”
At the same time, he said protestors should flood Republican members of Congress, including First District Rep. James Comer, “with calls, texts, letters, etc., especially by people in red states. Threaten them with defeat if they don’t stop Trump.”
He said the Democratic Party “should be running numerous, repeated, and attractive TV ads demonstrating Trump’s unfitness for office and, simultaneously, running many ads focusing on the economy. Use ordinary people to show their real and compelling problems paying for food and insurance.”
He suggested party officials should enlist “business and corporate leaders to run a whole series of anti-tariff ads. Again, these should be aimed at all people and clearly and calmly explain what tariffs really are and give precise examples of how they hurt business as well as consumers.”
He also challenged Democratic leaders to “run ads exposing the ICE and CBP [Customs and Border Protection] goons for what they are. Many people do not watch TV news as we do; we must get their attention with radio spots, billboards, and podcasts.”
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